


Residuum

by joonfired



Category: Annihilation (2018 Garland)
Genre: Alien Sex, Alien/Human Relationships, Aliens, Body Horror, Confusion, Developing Relationship, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Dreamscapes, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Dubious Science, F/M, First Time, Gen, How Do I Tag, Loneliness, Other, PTSD of the ET kind, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shimmer Aesthetic, Slow Burn, Weird Biology, just a whole lot of dubiousness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:35:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22898104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joonfired/pseuds/joonfired
Summary: residuum:noun, plural =1- the residue, remainder, or rest of something.2- also residue. Chemistry. a quantity or body of matter remaining after evaporation, combustion, distillation, etc.3 - any residual product.
Relationships: Kane Double/Lena (Annihilation), Lena (Annihilation) & The Shimmer
Comments: 20
Kudos: 31





	1. murmuration

**Author's Note:**

> I know nothing of the books, I was just recently entranced by that weirdly beautiful movie & had to write  
> And I did my best to tag appropriately for content, but enter at your own risk, hence the "choose not to use Archive Warnings" because idk what I might end up throwing in here ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Memories hurt and they are still trapped behind white walls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  __ **murmuration:**  
>  \- the phenomenon that results when hundreds, sometimes thousands, of (ex: starlings) fly (or move) in swooping, intricately coordinated patterns through the sky

She calls him Kane. 

He's not the man she knows and remembers, even if he's wearing his face and body and fractured memories. But she still uses that name, the word falling heavy from her lips like she can’t stop it, can’t keep it inside. She says it day after day, just like breathing until it catches sharp in her throat because she  _ knows _ that name doesn’t belong to him, she saw the original flash and burn and knows he’s merely an anatomical copy.

The doctors call him lucky. Maybe that should be his name—Lucky.

“Do you think they’re going to release us?” Lena asks again, curled next to him on the narrow cot.

His knowledge is a short list of shaky definites. So, he says, “I don’t know.”

“I asked what you think,” she says, quiet and still against him. “Not what you know.”

He stares up at the white ceiling. “I—I don’t really think . . .” 

She sighs as if conversations are a battle she always loses.

“It’s okay. I don’t know if I’d let us go, either.”

“Why?”

“Because of where we came from, what happened to us. Aren’t you curious?”

“Not really.”

Lena sits up, her hair falling limp against her shoulders, longer than the second time he woke up and saw her and they embraced, feeling the difference they shared rooted inside. Time here is measured by growth, by when there are more people watching and poking and testing them.

Time is measured by Lena’s hair.

“Are you glad you didn’t die?” she smiles, teeth poking into view from behind dry, flaking lips. “Do you like being alive?”

“I don’t know.”

She lies back down, elbows jostling his side until she settles, head resting on his shoulder and breath tickling his neck with warmth.

“That’s why we’re still here,” she says. “We’re a mystery they have to solve.”

<> <> <>

Kane-not-Kane is tired.

Not of living, but of being here, connected to tubes and needles and things that he’s not really connected to at all. They’re not a part of him, they’re just  _ inside _ , an invasion that makes his skin want to crawl away from his bones.

And the questions—so many fucking questions that sprawl like vines, each new branch spawning five more and on and on.

These people in white cloud-suits and glass faces don’t ask things like Lena. They ask like thorns, like teeth, like knives. They cut and cut but he has nothing for them to see . . . so they just keep cutting, keep asking.

“Do you remember your name?”

“She calls me Kane.”

“Where were you born?”

“I don’t remember.”

He remembers, vaguely. It’s like two waves meeting and swirling together, but both have warmth and blood and pain. Both are dark until he is pushed, crawls, finds himself somewhere light and different and confusing.

“How many men went with you into the Shimmer?”

“Ten . . . I think.”

The recent memories are the easiest to hold onto yet also the trickiest because that’s when he, not Kane, but  _ him _ the Kane-not-Kane-but-lucky began. If he was measured by human time, he’s still so very young.

But memories hurt. He doesn’t like thinking; it’s difficult and slippery, like wet-moss rocks under bare feet. He wants them to stop asking him to think and just let him live.

“What are you thinking about?” Lena asks him later.

“I don’t like it here,” he says.

She inhales sharply, an absence of her body pressing against him but the presence of surprise.

“What else are you thinking about?” Her voice is soft and her questions never cut. They just . . .  _ are _ .

“Me,” he says. “And you.”

“What do you remember of me?”

That particular question cuts a little, but he doesn’t mind. He closes his eyes and remembers Lena.

She is smiles and hidden eyes and smooth skin and anger. Words whispered against his neck but also silence too loud that needs words which never come. She is something he knows the best, a face that haunts his dreams, a body he has learned so many times . . . 

“You are what I know the best,” he says.

<> <> <>

He hates the color of this place.

He doesn’t hate white, but he hates this white. It’s so flat and stiff and glaring, nothing to break the pattern, nothing to make a pattern. It’s just . . . empty.

Being here feels like not-living and he needs to live, to stretch, to change, to grow, to  _ live _ .

He paces slowly, footsteps making the patterns he craves. He closes his eyes and dreams of color—

It’s easy to remember colors.

Dark-scarred rock and smooth white are the foundation, followed by shade of sky and ocean waves beating green against the mottled brownish hues of sand where, sometimes, if he looked long enough, purples and blues and reds of broken shells peeked out at his eyes.

The next color that leaps out is the red of his blood sliding slick down the glass.

The colorless void of spiraling cold unknown that hurt and pushed down until waking up into this flat, colorless prison.

He opens his eyes and nothing around him has changed.

When Lena comes back, drained from another storm of questions, she doesn’t come to his plastic-wrapped room. She walks like she is alone and lost, guided into her own plastic-wrapped prison that he can see but cannot touch.

He stands by the wall and waits for her to look at him, but she curls up.

“Lena!” he says.

The white cloud-suits answer to the name that isn’t theirs. “She’s sleeping.”

“I want to see her.”

“She’s sleeping.”

“I know.” He smiles.

The cloud-suit person mirrors him, but their smile spins upside down. A frown.

He stops smiling. Something from his stolen memories told him smiles were good to get what he wanted, but maybe that is a fractured piece he’s seeing broken and wrong.

“Thank you,” he replies, and goes back to his small bed that now feels too big.

He looks at his hands, at the ends that are so very much not-sharp. He wants them to stretch and move into what he needs—something to claw his way out of this white prison and to Lena and life.

They have to get out of here.

<> <> <>

“We have to get out of here,” he tells Lena when she wakes up.

They sit side by side on his bed, close enough to touch but far enough that they do not. She is pulling at the ends of her fingers, staring at the bits she tears off and lets fall to the ground.

“We’re not getting out,” she says.

“We have to.”

She laughs softly, now moving to lean towards him and rest her head on his shoulder. Red sprouts liquid where she’s pulled parts of herself apart and away, smudging pink against the white of her clothes.

“How? Do you know? I don’t.”

“I think,” he says slowly, lowly, knowing the cloud-suits should not know, “we can.”

Lena sits up fast, taking his face between her hands and staring deep into his eyes; the same kind of eyes she uses to look at him—dark with a moving sunshine color that marks them as different and same.

“Kane . . .” 

He waits until the name catches sharp in her throat with a wince and shudder.

“I’m not Kane,” he tells her. “I’m not him.”

“But you look like him,” she murmurs, those beautifully  _ alive _ eyes filling with tears. “I know he’s not you and you’re not him, but you look . . .”

Her whole body is shaking, arms moving to swirl around and cling to him. He isn’t sure what to do, but then a memory steps forward as if to offer help.

“Breathe, Lena,” he whispers, holding her as tightly as she’s holding him.

“Stop being him,” she sighs, but her hold tightens.

“I don’t know who else to be.”

“I know.” Her voice sounds wet. “I know. I’m sorry.”

What is there for her to be sorry about? She didn’t make him, didn’t send her Kane into the place that birthed him, didn’t ask for a copy to compensate for her loss even though he’s not even a replacement, more like a fake, a mockery—

But she cheated and lied and broke something in Kane that has carried over into him, something warped and confusing.

Maybe she does have something to be sorry for.

It doesn’t matter. It didn’t happen to him; he just feels the chaotic echoes.

“You don’t have to do this,” she says into his chest. “You can go. Find your own life. I was learning how to live without you, w-without  _ him _ . I can do it again.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I didn’t want any of this. But I have it.”

They have it.

<> <> <>

Even if this cage of theirs is blank, it has its patterns—an ebb and flow that cannot be hidden no matter how much white it disguises itself with.

He sees them and learns. He waits.

And then one night, when the cloud-suit finishes their drink and leaves a short time after, he acts.

Lena is sleeping and startles when he touches her shoulder. Her hand curls defensively around his wrist and twists hard, but he is patient and waits for her to understand.

"What is it?" she asks, low and whispering.

He smiles because she already seems to know what this is. 

"Quickly," he says, because the timing of this pattern is narrow and slippery.

"We can't just walk ou—"

"Yes, we can."

And they do. They are quick and quiet and running out of those blank rooms, stumbling into air that moves with life and smells like dirt and wet and green and good.

"Hey!" someone shouts. "Stop!"

But change is unstoppable, inevitable. They are not trapped anymore. They are free to change.

They are free.


	2. exception

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They are hunted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **exception:**  
>  1 - someone or something that is different from others  
> 2 - a case where a rule does not apply

It says her name the same way Kane does.

Did.

Had.

Still does?

Lena doesn’t know.

This copy feels to her like an echo, the familiar warped into unfamiliar. Her eyes are deceived by the angles and planes she knows, but her mind keeps her heart wise.

However, her heart has always been stupid, leading her astray. It feels right to sway towards this Kane-not-Kane. It feels right to trust, even when she wakes up and is told to run.

She doesn’t think about why—why Kane left and told _this_ to come back instead, why it feels easier, why she chose to break what she had in her old, normal past, why, why, _why_ . She’s a scientist to her core, every fiber of her being always curious, always searching, always wondering _why_.

But now she isn’t supposed to think. She runs.

They run.

Through shallow pits of sucking mud, water sloshing up their legs and turning white fabric dark to cloak them in the night. Past slapping, slashing branches into firmer ground full of thorn-vine tripwires that catch and hold their ankles, biting sharp and slowing them.

“I need . . . a minute,” she pants, stumbling down hard onto her knees.

The Kane-copy stops a few paces ahead and turns back to her, sinking into a crouch. “Are you hurt?”

Lena hurts in so many infinitesimal and astronomical ways; physically but more mentally, internally, somewhere _else_ she can’t locate, just feel the ache of it twisting indescribably inside.

But she says, “no, I’m okay.”

There is nothing but the quiet of swamps and forest surrounding them, ruptured by their muddied bodies. The forest feels both like home and a new kind of prison, something about the restless quiet setting her skin on edge.

“They’re not going to chase us,” she says, straightening stiffly up.

“I know,” is the reply, followed by deep, searching inhalations.

Lena inhales with instinctual mimicry. She closes her eyes and breathes the forest in, tasting what her nose catches and brings to her tongue: wet dirt, pine sap and stepped-on needles, crushed leaves, the mud and sweat of her body—

And something else. Strong and dangerous and different, too different for her mind to recognize what it is, only know she cannot let it find her, them, anything.

“What is that?” she asks.

“Bad news,” it says, standing up and reaching for her.

“The Shimmer’s gone,” she states but her voice still trembles with the unknown of a small, creeping _but what if it’s not_ as she accepts the offered hand, hauling herself up from her knees. “I burned it.”

“I’m here,” it tells her quietly. “You’re here. That thing is here. You destroyed a home, not the family.”

Lena stares through the dark with her changed-new eyes, objects outlined in fuzzy details lit by a graying haze.

He . . . it . . . she doesn’t know how to think about all of this. She doesn’t know where to start to try and untangle things, part of her desperate to sort and box things away with nice, shiny labels that she can understand.

But what’s said is right: the changes made have remained. What unknown conglomerations are still wandering about the forest, the drive to find and acquire new DNA still coded into their changed cells?

What if they are all tied together because they were changed by the same thing?

What if this thing can find them because of that change?

What if . . .

Lena grits her teeth. Too many questions and no time. She has to be a soldier now and a scientist later if they’re going to survive this wonderful, terrible forest.

“We should find high ground,” the copy says. “Get into a building or find some weapons.”

That’s the Kane part talking, she knows. Hears the timber and roll of its words change and slow into a near-perfect imitation. Recognizes the soldier training they shared in a life that feels so long ago it’s turned into a past incarnation of herself, of themselves, of everything.

“There isn’t anything but forest for miles,” she murmurs, more to herself than to him. To _it_.

“Then we climb,” it replies.

It bunches down and _leaps_ for a moss-strangled oak, landing somewhere above that sends a flurry of snapped twigs and spinning leaves onto her head like faerie confetti. Lena tilts her head up to watch as Kane-not-Kane clambers through the branches, up, up, up into the gray-dark-smudge of night sky.

She crouches low, shifting her feet flat through the ground, soft and spongy like wet bread or exposed lungs. Her body tightens, tenses, ready to follow, to soar after this copy, to survive—

—when something lunges from the undergrowth.

The attack is slime-slick and muscular, wrapping around her ankle. She falls with a grunt, elbows and knees spearing the ground, creating furrows as she’s dragged while trying, fighting, clawing for a grip. The creature burbles and moans as she kicks at it with her free foot, but she doesn’t see what it is, what it used to be, the mass of it hidden by the gray-dark and thrashing undergrowth.

“Kane!” Lena yells, too desperate to stop herself from remembering Kane is dead.

Survival blurs lines she intended to keep sharp enough cut if she wandered too close. Things she can’t think about untangling and just wants to push far, far, far away into dark corners to grow fuzzy with dust and spiderwebs.

Kane-not-Kane drops from the sky, a garbled shriek relaying that it landed on the creature. It releases her leg, sucking back into the dim to defend itself . . . and Lena scrambles after it.

The copy is sprawled-punching-growling atop a pinkish-translucent flurry of tentacles and something snapping in short, dangerous clicks. The scientist in her perks up as Lena scans the thing, noting elements of squid, snake from the scaly glints her eyes catch in the gray, and something more, something about the clicking sound, like teeth . . .

The Kane-copy yelps in pain, twisting away and tumbling against Lena’s legs. Its gaze finds hers instantly, magnetically, momentarily in the dark before it rolls up to his feet.

He— _it_ holds his left arm against its side, the coppery tang of blood wafting thick into the swamp air.

The creature whirls to face them, tentacles rising in an awful halo about the mass of central body that opens with a dangerous snap, like a butcher’s cleaver coming down heavy through bone. It wavers before them, swaying almost mesmerizingly in the night. As if it senses they are touched by the same changer, shaped by the same creating power . . .

“Run!” the copy blurts, reaching for Lena’s hand and tugging her back into awareness. Back into a soldier.

The creature lunges after them as they sprint away, tentacles flailing through the tree branches, the body pulled heavily after. She can hear it, awkward and ungainly but fast enough to make her push herself, knees lifted high to keep herself from tripping.

Suddenly, the creature shrieks, the sounds dimming as it falls behind. Lena starts to slow, turns her head to glance over her shoulder—

Kane-not-Kane’s expression furrows from exertion into worry as it abruptly focuses on something ahead, something she isn’t looking at because she’s looking at it, at him, at the imitation of a compass she always drifted back to.

“Stop!” it pants, slowing and reaching to stop her.

But she doesn’t respond fast enough. She is too rooted in running, her limbs moving automatically, fueled more by instinct than thought.

Lena looks ahead just as she collides with a criss-cross-spaghetti-woven white mass. It springs forward beneath her weight and then catches her firmly, her surprised flails doing nothing to free herself.

And then the pain greets her.

It’s sharp and searing, like knives slicing whisper-thin everywhere the web touches her skin. She screams, blind to everything except get away, get away, _getawaygetawaygetawayGETAWAY_. Her vision starts to recede in spreading yellow spots throbbing behind her eyes.

She feels limp.

Something big and dark lumbers against her, exploring with rasping sandpaper touches. Muted clicks echo in the distance as fear crawls sloth-like up her spine. This isn’t good, isn’t safe, she has to go. Get away.

She feels like she is fading, drifting apart into strands of dandelion silk and withered chaff.

“Lena,” a voice says desperately.

Kane was never desperate. Needy, wanting, happy, but never like this. He never said her name like he couldn’t breathe without speaking it, not like this one does.

Maybe that’s why Kane left and gave her this. Maybe he knew this one would love her better.

She fades further.

The something big and dark scuttles quickly away from her as something else, something Lena knows and gains a broken sense of relief from chases after in stomping, crushing, pulping steps.

There is a satisfying wet crunch. And another.

Lena thinks, if this is the end, it feels okay. It hurts beyond description and she feels herself in pieces, but at least she will go with someone to mourn the tiny loss she would leave the world with.

 _No_ , her mind shouts. _Fight. Survive. Live. Stop. Move. Scream. Run. Live. Fight. Run._

But she can’t fight against the pain dragging down into her skin, cutting in white-strand-slices, dulling her senses and drowning her vision in pulsing yellow that is oh-so-too-quickly going into a finalizing dark.


End file.
